Members of the LWF delegation to CSW69 in New York. Photo: LWF/P. Hitchen
Commission on the Status of Women ends with the adoption of declaration calling for eradication of gender-based violence
(LWI) - The curtain came down on the 69th session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) on 21 March with a strong call to member states to honor the commitments they made at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, three decades ago. Delegates from the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) were among the 13,000 participants at this annual gathering in New York, which included over 8,800 civil society organizations.
Commenting on the political declaration, adopted by all member states at the end of the two-week CSW session, LWF’s Senior Advocacy Officer, Sikhonzile Ndlovu noted it offers “some glimmer of hope with strong calls to eradicate poverty and sexual and gender-based violence, invest in education and social protection.” She said: “Now we wait to see if member states will finance this ambitious declaration in light of an increasing pushback on gender equality and challenging of previously agreed language by some member states.”
The CSW69 session was focused on marking the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, an ambitious blueprint for gender equality and women’s rights which was adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women back in 1995.
Progress and persisting injustices
Some of the LWF delegates in New York were not yet born when that conference took place. Others remembered it well as a high point in a hopeful, post-Cold War period. Women from LWF’s member churches were part of the civil society action in Beijing, including advocates from Kenya, India and the United States who are featured in a new publication looking back and asking what remains to be done to make the Beijing vision a reality.
Kaleb Sutherland, director of the International Leaders Program for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was one of the LWF delegates taking part in CSW69. When the Beijing conference took place, he was just five years old, but, three decades on, he is deeply concerned about the discrimination that persists against girls and young women in education. Although significant progress has been made in many countries, he noted that globally, “129 million girls are still out of school,” many of them facing intersecting challenges “based on race, ethnicity, religion, migratory status and disabilities.”
As Lutherans, education is core to who we are.
Kaleb Sutherland, ELCA’s director of the International Leaders Program
Although more women are now enrolled in higher education than men worldwide, Sutherland lamented the gaps that remain for girls to complete secondary education in some regions, especially in the poorest, rural areas. Unequal burdens of care work (the theme of next year’s CSW), lack of equal employment opportunities and a persistent gender pay gap compound the problems for young women seeking a life of dignity and fulfilment. “In the United States, for example,” he said, “Black and Hispanic women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) earn about $20,000 a year less than average and about $33,000 less than their white, male counterparts.”
“As Lutherans, education is core to who we are,” Sutherland insisted, adding that “education of girls and young women has a powerful multiplier effect on progress towards all of the critical areas of concern” set out in the Beijing Platform for Action. “We celebrate that the LWF contributes to increasing girls’ access to education, particularly in low-income and conflict affected areas,” he said, reiterating that “when women and girls access education, all of society benefits from more inclusive, environmentally sustainable economic growth."
Rising levels of gender-based violence
As a 28-year-old psycho-social worker with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia, Kamilla Buitrago Guerra is also deeply concerned about persisting injustice, violence and discrimination against women in her country. “In my family, I am the exception,” she said, “as my mother, my relatives, my closest friends have all suffered from gender-based violence.” Rape and sexual violence cases in Colombia have tripled over the past two decades, with 88 percent affecting girls under 18.
Guerra also noted that less than 50 percent of women in her country have their own source of income, while “discrimination against women and unjust institutions are rooted in a deeply sexist and patriarchal culture.” She told a panel of young faith-based actors that she hopes for a recommitment from governments to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, as well as “accountability for perpetrators and reparations for survivors of gender-based violence” in her country.
Another CSW delegate, Rev. Lilana Kasper, the first female executive director of the Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa, also works to support survivors of gender-based violence in her country. “South Africa has the highest incidence of intimate partner violence in the world,” she noted. “We say that every 10 minutes a woman gets killed and every 23 minutes a woman is raped by someone she knows and should be able to trust.”
15 years ago, Kasper was part of a task force set up by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa to respond to this hidden scourge. As a survivor herself, she knew that many women did not know where to turn for help and were unable “to find the language or find a voice to describe what was happening to them.” Since then, she said, the church has developed a tool kit and trained a focal person in each of its seven dioceses to support survivors with pathways for justice and healing.
“What I take away from CSW is how to step up our advocacy for the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals,” Kasper said. She echoed the words of the LWF statement to CSW calling for “stronger accountability mechanisms to ensure the robust and complete implementation of the framework” drawn up 30 years ago.
